Veni, Vidi, Scripsi

Daily Archives: September 19, 2012

Yes, I know a lot of you were excitedconfusedinterestedbemusedsuicidal … well, something… when I posted a snippet from a press release announcing and addition to leetUP’s Awesomesauce.live event tour. To recap:

LOS ANGELES – ATTENTION all giant robot-loving, D&D-obsessed, podcast-pirating, LARP-afflicted, zombie-slaying, cartoon-watching, bacon-eating people of the world -leetUP today announced that viral luminary Grace Helbig will be joining the “AWESOMESAUCE.LIVE!” 2012 fall tour. The massive tour de force which Complex Magazine coined “Kevin Pereira’s Coachella for nerds,” is set to descend and ravage pop culture fanatics in 10 cities this fall. The YouTube darling hits the road for nine shows, beginning September 20 in Seattle with stops in Portland, Austin, Dallas, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Madison and Chicago. (*Minneapolis excluded)

Well, sad to say, the tour appears to be going the way of Planet Michael. From today’s follow up press release:

LOS ANGELES – September 19, 2012 – Due to conflicting promotional obligations from added markets for Kevin Pereira’s new Warner Bros. show, “Let’s Ask America,” the inaugural leetUP “Awesomesauce.Live” tour has been postponed. The interactive comedy variety show, which Complex Magazine dubbed “Kevin Pereira’s Coachella for Nerds” was set to descend upon and ravage pop culture fanatics in 10 cities this fall, beginning September 20 in Seattle, with stops in Portland, Austin, Dallas, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, Madison, and Chicago. Pereira, who was to be joined on tour by a series of geeky celebs and interweb stars including Epic Meal Time, VJ Mike Relm and YouTube darling, Grace Helbig, assures fans efforts will be made to bring leetUP to a city near them as scheduling permits.

Said Pereira, “It was not an easy decision to postpone, but it’s the right one. We know our fans deserve nothing short of an over-the-top spectacle and we will deliver when the time is right. We are sorry for any temporarily broken hearts. Email us at iamsad@leetup.com and we will get back to you with digital hugs and gratitude.” Promoters of the tour remain enthusiastic about leetUP “Awesomesauce.Live!” and are looking at dates to reschedule. “With the great success of the first leetUP in Los Angeles, we fully support and are looking forward to promoting dates in the future,” said Lesley Olenik, Talent Buyer for Goldenvoice.

Basically, “Hey, sorry guys, but we got a real gig. Catch you later!”

Of course, the key item from the whole thing is this line at the very end:

Gerrymandering may be used to achieve desired electoral results for a particular party, or may be used to help or hinder a particular demographic, such as a political, racial, linguistic, religious or class group.

I live in California. I know all about Gerrymandering. We provide source material on the topic these days.

My State in Action

And apparently somebody is taking this idea from real world politics to try and “fix” the CSM election process.

Somehow I don’t think creating a convoluted election mechanism to punish players able to organize (in a game that rewards organization) is really addressing the issue when only ~15% of accounts even bother to vote for the Galactic Student Council. (~60K votes cast out of a population of ~400K accounts.)

One of my comments on the meeting minutes from the Spring summit of the CSM was that, based on their output, “the favored topic of CSM7 appears to be CSM7,” which certainly fits the student council model. (As opposed to the UN model, which would have been equally useful, but more entertaining to watch.)

My opinion on that remains unchanged.

But it does look like CCP is really the force driving this particular issue. CCP seems to want a “better,” more broad based council and is frustrated by the fact that the groups successful in most political part of the game… null sec… are also successful in CCPs sandbox political game. What a surprise!

That is the problem with creating democratic institutions. It becomes hard to rig them to get the results you want without looking like you are rigging them merely to get the results you want. But that isn’t going to stop CCP from trying I guess.

Maybe CCP should scrap the whole thing and go the SOE route. Just create a “by invitation only” advisory group that they can whistle up and fly out at need for discussion and otherwise ignore.

What do you think? Does the CSM have any value for the player base?

Addendum: CSM7 loses another supporter and Seleene is in there trying to quash criticism again by insisting that you can only know the real story if you talk to the CSM in person. That worked out so well for Jester.